John W. Loftus

True. This is a bit tricky, I know. But then this expresses a tradition that Paul did meet with the early church leaders, and it also expresses a tradtion that Paul persecuted early Christians. If those traditions are even partially true than the originator of the Jesus Cult was not Paul. And at the very minimum Paul thought with the early church leaders that Jesus was a real person.

Well, then, any pre-conceived notion that doesn't fit the textual evidence can be denied, can't it? That isn't being objective with the facts.

They all had visions of a resurrected Jesus, but once again you're deniing the objective textual evidence that there was a real human person that called them together as disciples in the first place.

Paul preached "Jesus and him crucified." Sermons were long in those days. One tradition has a guy falling asleep while he preached (in Acts). What was he preaching?

dog-on

...and that tradition comes from Acts, which Paul did not write. We do not know what Paul may have thought concerning what the "early church leaders" may have believed regarding Jesus. He simply never says, in any of his writings.

A whole other discussion, but regardless, the text, as it stands, still doesn't say what you would like it to say.

"Obejective textual evidence" such as?

Paul didn' write acts....

John W. Loftus

I know, as I said.

Let's do it this way.

Do you believe Paul existed? Why or why not?

dog-on

Someone wrote the epistles. Paul is the name attached, so for all intensive purposes, that person is Paul.

John W. Loftus

Which ones? What parts? If the Gospels were not written by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John then maybe all of his letters were written by a guy named George, or, maybe they were written by various individuals. There is no independent evidence an Apostle named Paul existed. In these letters he claimed to do miracles, and he claims to have visited the highest heaven. This is an extraordinary claim and as such why should I believe he existed? You have the burden of proof. Such a burden has not been met.

Same method. Same result.

dog-on

You are stretching a bit.

The Gospels, unlike the Paulines, have no author internally identified, so it could have been a Greek or Roman George, for all we know.

Do you have a letter from an author identifying himself as Jesus Christ?

John W. Loftus

Sorry, this is MY claim about you. ;-)

Okay.

Nope, don't need to anymore than someone needs a letter from Socrates to show he existed (BTW he never wrote anything either). My point is that textual evidence is evidence, prima facia evidence.

dog-on

I don't assume Socrates existed, other than in the mind of Plato. Do you have some evidence for him?

So the textual evidence is prima facie evidence for what? A belief in a cosmic Christ?

Do you disagree that the Gospels, themselves, are highly midrashic? Does such a literary composition lend itself to historicity, in your mind?

gurugeorge

The texts are prima facie evidence of something alright - but they are prima facie evidence of a cosmic god-man type of figure. That's what they were intended to be (in the form of a Canon).

They are most decidely not prima facie evidence THAT there was a man behind the myth of a cosmic god-man figure.

That has to be dug out of them, as does evidence for any other of the several possible options that a rational person can pursue (having ruled out miracle-working god-men), such as: fraud (pious or otherwise); literary invention; composite myth based on visionary/mystical experience.

Christian rationalists in the 18th and 19th centuries made a bad slip here: at a certain point it just became untenable rationally to believe in miracle-working god-men. So, as Christians (but as rational people who could no longer believe in miracle-working god-men) they naturally just assumed euhemerism - they just assumed that although the texts obviously couldn't be the kind of evidence they purported to be (because the kind of entity they purported to be evidence of can't possibly exist), they must be evidence of a someone. But that's just a mistake.

But non-Christian rationalists are under no obligation to make the same mistake. As soon as the texts fail to be what they purport to be, the field is open, it does not immediately channel to mythopoeia or euhemerism.

bacht

John the Baptist?